Drugs, Law and Conflict

**Day of the Dead offering in honor of female homicide victims from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Photo courtesy of Glen’s Pics.

The Division of Integrated Biodefense (DIB), part of the Imaging Science and Information Systems (ISIS) Center at Georgetown University, is seeking an intern for their project on civil violence in Mexico. See full description here.

Also at Georgetown: Daniel Sabet, whose research on successful police reform in Mexico is much needed and worth reading.

The Justice in Mexico Project has released the 20-page report “Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis from 2001-2009″ [ PDF (5.42 MB) ] :

“Mexico closed the decade with an unprecedented level of violence, and a record number of drug-related killings in 2009. In light of the spectacular nature of this violence and the challenge it represents for the Mexican state, it raises serious concerns for the Mexican public, for policy makers, and for Mexico’s neighboring countries. This report provides an overview of the trends found in available data on drug-related killings in Mexico, and offers some brief observations about the causes of violence and the effectiveness of recent efforts to combat organized crime.”

**Photo courtesy Antonio Sierra and the AP.

As widely reported, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, aka “El Barbas” and the self-proclaimed “jefe de jefes,” was killed in Cuernavaca last Thursday in an operation led by the Mexican Navy. The Mexican government has claimed the death as a major success against organized crime, and the operation indeed appeared well-planned and executed. Yet we must frame this incident in context and not overestimate its significance.

The DEA, for example, released a statement proudly asserting, “The reign of Arturo Beltran-Leyva is over.” Who, then, is responsible for the gruesome murder of three family members of an elite Mexican marine who participated in the raid soon after his public funeral? This is certainly a reprisal killing, and more can be expected. This is the cartel, after all, that brazenly assassinated the acting head of the Mexican federal police last year, and infiltrated Interpol.

**Graphic of cartel alliances circa summer 2008.

The LATimes posted an interesting article on the strategy behind the Mexican government’s publicity of the cartel leader’s death, comparing it to to the tactics used by drug traffickers. They quote Mexican security analyst Jorge Chabat, writing in El Universal:

“The humiliated corpse, with its pants lowered, covered with bloody bills in one photo and religious objects in another, showed the typical modus operandi of narco-traffickers… The only thing missing was a sign saying ’so that you learn to respect’ to confirm the unmistakable stamp of an act of narco revenge.

In this fight, public opinion does matter.

See more photos from the raid here and video from El Universal here.

A wall separating two slums in Rio de Janeiro, occupied by police after eight young people were kidnapped. Photo courtesy of Douglas Engle/Australfoto, via The Guardian.

The Guardian recently highlighted “Dancing With the Devil,” a documentary about violence in Rio de Janeiro’s slums. Professor Silvia Ramos of Brazil’s Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania writes,

Rio de Janeiro is no stranger to the sound of gunfire or to images of out-of-breath policemen sprinting into the favelas. Each week the newspapers are filled with pictures of bulletproof vehicles and automatic weapons, of gun-battles and drug busts, of people being arrested and people being killed.

But Dancing With The Devil shows us something we have never before seen on the big screen: the faces of Rio’s drug traffickers and policemen, who tell their stories staring straight into the camera, without disguises or masks.

See a clip of the film here.

Photo courtesy of Boston.com Bringas

It seems that the 2009 UN World Drug Report, available here, has inspired The Boston Globe to come up with a compelling photo essay chronicling the War on Drugs and its effects throughout the world – definitely worth a look.

Cocaine capsules are prepared for human smugglers who will ingest them and transport them to Europe. Photo courtesy Marco Vernaschi.

Hat tip to my friend Alexis for finding this haunting photoessay of the damage caused by drugs and violence in Guinea Bissau, courtesy of über-talented photographer Marco Vernaschi. The full set of photos is available here, and is very much worth seeing, even if hard to stomach.

The UNODC reported on West Africa’s increasing importance in the global drug trade last month in a 102-page report entitled “Transnational Trafficking and the Rule of Law in West Africa: A Threat Assessment.” The pdf is available here.

part 4 of a 4-part weeklong series

• The AFP offers a bleak but must-read portrait of the problems associated with increasing quantities of Afghan heroin passing through Pakistan, as the drug trade shifts:

Pakistan shares a 2,500-kilometre (1,560-mile) porous border with Afghanistan, which supplies 90 percent of the opium used to make heroin worldwide. As such, the largely lawless region is the key transit point for heroin, morphine and hashish heading west to Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Europe, and east to China.

As it passes through what has become the central theatre of the “war on terror,” cheap supplies are left behind for the locals, with one gram costing as little as 80 rupees (one dollar) in Karachi, the southern port on the Arabian Sea and Pakistan’s commercial hub.

The result? Overwhelmed security forces and 4 million drug addicts facing a “chronically underfunded and crumbling health system.” Note that the number of addicts is reported by the Pakistani Anti-Narcotics Force, “which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting drug offences”–ie, not a public health organism. This force, nevertheless, works in conjunction with paramilitary units to patrol the contested border. The article states that the most commonly abused drug in Pakistan is actually hashish, whose production is on the rise in Afghanistan as well. Unfortunately, authorities there are busy combating the opium trade. (Sorry, Pakistan.)

• Haji Juma Khan, one of Afghanistan’s leading opium traffickers, faces new charges in US court. Reuters reports that the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office revealed a superceding indictment including charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to fund and financing terrorism. The narco-terrorism charges are some of the first employed under the federal statute passed in 2006. The Guardian last year featured a long profile on the interesting character that is Khan: “an elderly, pious-looking Baluch tribesman” and yet “one of about 20 men who run Afghanistan’s £2bn heroin trade.”

• Success in Helmand? The Washington Times reports on recent successes in Helmand, including the capture of seven major players in the Afghan heroin trade:

While Afghanistan remains the world’s largest source of opium and heroin, the arrests have provided crucial information about the operations of complex South Asian drug syndicates and the links they have with extremists…

“In Afghanistan, you can’t separate drugs from terrorism,” [ex-DEA operations chief Michael] Braun said. “The drug traffickers are trying to destabilize the government, and it’s the same for the terrorists. They all thrive in the same ungoverned space.”

• Speaking of governance… Ashraf Ghani, a candidate in Afghanistan’s August presidential elections, has released a report with the Atlantic Council laying out recommendations for a ten-year plan. According to the Washington Post, the plan has four central components:

“The game changer is to produce a legitimate election that the next government of Afghanistan can have a mandate,” said Ghani, who is seen as an outside contender in the August 20 presidential vote.

Second, the international community needs to develop a coherent strategy to reverse a situation in which development aid efforts are often wasteful, unaccountable and prone to funneling most of the donors’ money to foreign experts and contractors, he said.

Ghani said the third element was new national programs modeled on relatively unheralded successes in Afghanistan such as the National Solidarity Program for rural development and the national telecommunications network.

Finally, eight of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces should be set up as model provinces — laboratories for reforms.

• An editorial in the Toronto Star suggests legalizing opium for medical purposes as part of a holistic counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. The authors write,

No, we’re not advocating the legalization of opium or heroin, but legalizing the poppy agriculture in Afghanistan with contracts to use the opiates to create medicine, like morphine and codeine…

Opiate-based painkillers are already available and cheap, but many under-privileged countries import little or none, largely because they fear the drug will lead to addiction and abuse. Meanwhile, their sick suffer needlessly. While these drugs can be highly addictive when used illegally, doctors in the western world have had great success in treating patients with opiates, and report low levels of addiction. With an aggressive education campaign on the benefits and realities of opiate-based painkillers, developing nations could cause an enormous swell to the world’s demand for poppies.

• Hezbollah relies on Mexican organized crime for smuggling drugs and humans into the US. According to authorities cited by the Washington Times, “The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America’s tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.”

• …while local Lebanese traffickers target the military in a revenge attack. Last week, gunmen supposedly associated with the hashish and heroin-trafficking Jaafar clan attacked an army truck using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, killing five. According to the LA Times, the incident came as a response to the killing of a Jaafar clan patriarch of at an army checkpoint in late March.

• New resources: The Afghan Conflict Monitor has a wonderful Facts and Figures section regarding the drug trade which features a ton of information on three central issues: drugs production, opium trafficking routes and counternarcotics strategy.

Part 3 of a 4-part weeklong series

**Peruvian children walk on dried coca leaves spread over a soccer field in the Vizcatán region of Peru. Photo courtesy of Moises Saman for the NYTimes.

• A resurgence of the Shining Path in Peru? Thank the cocaine trade. The revival of what was considered a basically defunct guerrilla group, however limited, highlights the essential issue of rural poverty in the Andes and the need for viable alternative crops. The New York Times reports,

The front lines lie in the drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley. The region is Peru’s largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine…

“There are those who say, ‘Why worry about a few hundred fighters in the jungle?’ ” said Alberto Bolívar, a counterinsurgency expert. “But they easily forget the Shining Path began their armed struggle in 1980 with just a few hundred guys. Two decades later, 70,000 people were dead.”

But the Shining Path appears to have learned lessons, too. Coca farmers here describe today’s Maoists as a disciplined, well-armed force, entering villages in groups of 20 in crisp black uniforms. Little is known about their leaders, aside from the belief that two brothers, Victor Quispe Palomino, known as José, and Jorge Quispe Palomino, alias Raúl, are at the helm.

The photo slide show by Peruvian photographer Moises Saman is beautifully mind-blowing, and an absolute must-see.

• Mexican government claims drug-related violence down 26% in the first quarter of 2009. Milenio cites President Calderón saying that narco-executions have decreased in two of the country’s most violent cities–Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez–by a dramatic 78% and 82% respectively since October-December 2008. See the graph provided:

The Washington Post points out that claims of human rights abuses by the military in these entities have increased, with the exceptional nature of Calderón’s strategy:

The military occupation of Juarez, an industrial city of 1.3 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, is the most extreme example of Calderón’s high-risk strategy of using the army to confront Mexico’s powerful drug cartels. Besieged city officials signed an agreement surrendering responsibility for civilian law enforcement to the military.

The Juarez police department is now under the command of a retired three-star general and a dozen top military officers handpicked by Mexico’s defense secretary. Soldiers are the cops — they write traffic tickets, investigate domestic disputes, arrest drunks and run every department, including the jail, the training academy and the emergency call center.

More than 10,000 soldiers and federal agents patrol Juarez’s gritty streets. Dressed in green camouflage and carrying automatic weapons, they stage raids, detain suspects, and search travelers at the airport and border crossings, assuming unprecedented law enforcement duties.

• Obama in Mexico last week. The White House released a press release citing advances in the bilateral relationship following Obama’s visit to Mexico City. Most interesting, perhaps, is the designation of the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas (not the Gulf Cartel), and La Familia Michoacana as “Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers,” thereby “exposing them and their associates to financial sanctions under the U.S. Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.” The LA Times explains that Alan Bersin, an “aggressive former federal prosecutor credited with taming a once-lawless area of the region,” is to be named Obama’s border czar. Also, the Mexican government has approved Carlos Pascual as the new US ambassador; he now awaits Senate confirmation.

• El Chapo Guzmán: the world’s most controversial billionaire? Forbes named Mexico’s most wanted drug trafficker on its annual billionaires list, to much chagrin. (A Slate blogger questions how much money El Chapo and other traffickers could actually be raking in.) In what has become a major scandal, Durango-based Roman Catholic Archbishop Hector Gonzalez claimed over the weekend that “everyone knows” where El Chapo lives in this state and yet the government does nothing. (Does this lend power to the claims of La Reina del Pacífico?)

• The capture of Don Mario: “One capo goes down, another takes his place.” TIME reports on the potentially violent fall-out from the Colombian government’s successful capture of Medellín-based narco-paramilitary Don Mario. The Center for International Policy’s Plan Colombia and Beyond blog has links to media coverage and a profile of Don Mario.

• Building walls around Rio’s favelas: protecting the environment, or defending against narcos? El Pais reports (in Spanish) on the security wall constructed around the favela of Morro Dona Marta, which appears to serve a dual purpose. Dona Marta is one of the favelas occupied by the military police last year as part of the government’s aggressive new clear-and-hold strategy. The Guardian featured an interesting op-ed on the wall issue a few months back, clearly pointing out the rights issues involved.

• A decade of the drug war in numbers. From Adam Isacson at the Center for International Policy, “a compendium of drug war statistics.”

• New resources: The Citizens’ Institute for the Study of Crime (ICESI; Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad) has released its 5th annual victimization survey, a well-respected project which serves to help understand the incidence of crime in Mexico and its reporting. Also, Brookings’ Vanda Felbab-Brown published last month a fascinating paper entitled “The Violent Drug Market in Mexico and Lessons from Colombia”–a recommended read.

• Adam Isacson at the Center for International Policy’s “Plan Colombia and Beyond” blog sheds light on the new generation of criminal groups that have risen in Colombia following the official demobilization of the paramilitaries, profiling several known leadership figures. Nevertheless, Isacson warns that,

According to Colombia’s “New Rainbow” think-tank, which has performed extensive research on Colombia’s new paramilitary generation, there are more than 100 new militias, many of whose members and leaders have past relations with old paramilitary groups. They use about 21 different names, are active in 246 of Colombia’s 1,100 municipalities (counties), and have a combined membership estimated at about 10,000. They are cultivating ties with regional economic and political leaders. They often work with the guerrillas on the drug business. They also threaten and kill human-rights defenders, labor leaders, indigenous and afro-Colombian leaders, and independent journalists.

• The US State Department released a new travel advisory for Mexico, with some serious warnings about border violence:

Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades. Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez… The situation in northern Mexico remains fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements cannot be predicted.

• The FBI investigates whether billionaire Sir Allen Stanford was involved in money laundering schemes with Mexico’s ultra-violent Gulf cartel.

• What are the effects of enhanced sentences in “drug-free school zones” in the US? In a recent article with the spectacular title “You’re Probably in a Drug-Free School Zone Right Now,” the Boston Phoenix highlights the negative consequences, including the disproportionate jailing of urban minorities. The Phoenix cites a 2001 study by William Brownsberger, former Co-Chair of the Harvard Interdisciplinary Working Group on Drugs and Addictions, which found that, “because of the high density of schools in high-poverty and high-crime areas (almost all of Boston falls into enhancement zones), about 80 percent of drug arrests occurred in school zones, though less than one percent of drug cases involved sales to minors.”

• More than 50 members of the US Congress have written a letter to President Obama asking his administration to enforce the ban on imported assault weapons. Regarding the need to enforce the already-existing ban, the letter states,

This ban – first established nearly 20 years ago – was authorized by provisions in the 1968 Gun Control Act allowing ATF to prohibit the importation of firearms and ammunition that are not “particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.” The import restriction is independent of the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, and was not affected by its “sunset” in 2004.

The ban on assault weapon imports was first enforced by the George H.W. Bush Administration in response to growing threats to law enforcement personnel from the increased use of assault weapons by drug traffickers and in mass shootings, like the Stockton schoolyard massacre in 1989. The import restrictions were later strengthened in 1998 by the Clinton Administration to address foreign manufacturers that were evading the ban by making minor cosmetic changes to their weapons. The definition was changed to include any assault rifle with the “ability to accept a detachable large capacity magazine originally designed and produced for a military assault weapon.”

Unfortunately, in recent years, ATF has quietly abandoned enforcement of the import ban. As a result, the civilian firearms market is flooded with imported, inexpensive military-style assault weapons from primarily former Eastern bloc countries including Romania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia. Importers are also able to skirt the restrictions by bringing in assault weapons parts and reassembling them with a small number of US-made parts. Assault weapon “parts kits” for assembly by individuals are also being imported. ATF has further weakened the prohibition by placing certain extremely problematic assault rifles on the “curios or relics” list, making certain firearms automatically eligible for importation.

Congressman Elliot Engel (D-NY) — who wrote the letter along with Michael Castle (R-DE) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) — specifically cites the violence in Mexico as a reason to return to enforcement of this ban.

• A Canadian study finds no link between distribution of medical heroin and crime at the neighborhood level.

• Just in time for the Israeli elections: the Holocaust Survivors & Grown-Up Green Leaf Party. (via Chris Blattman)

• The American National Security Council (NSC) will be reorganized and expanded, perhaps to include the DEA, under Obama. As Eric Sterling argues on his blog, Sterling on Justice and Drugs, “Elevating the issue can help clarify that the intrinsic ineffectuality of drug prohibition is a serious aggravation of our national security.”

• Afghans are increasingly pessimistic about their country’s future, a BBC/ABC News poll finds. Drug traffickers are perceived as a declining threat, as the Taliban establish greater territorial dominance, and security concerns are greatest in the south and east of the country.

• Guatemala and the US have signed a letter of agreement releasing $3.65 million of Mérida Initiative aid. According to the State Department press release, “the Guatemalan Ministry of Government will participate in the following five projects fully funded by the U.S. Government: Central American Fingerprint Exchange, $400,000; Central American Vetted and Sensitive Investigative Units (SIU), $500,000; Transnational Anti-Gang Initiative (TAG), $1,225,000; Improved policing and police equipment, $975,500; and improved prison management, $550,000.” $550,000 will also go to the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.

• More on Mexican Brigadier General Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones, tortured and killed last week in Cancún, from the Washington Post. Tello was one of the highest-ranking military officers in Mexico and recently tapped to create and head an elite special forces unit to combat drug traffickers in the city. According to the article,

The Cancun mayor said he believes that “the strongest theory” points to the Zetas because of the brutality of the crime and its sophistication. Also, during his long military career, Tello served as the commander of army forces in the state of Michoacan, a drug production and trafficking hot spot. “The general worked very hard and did a lot of work in Michoacan, where the Zetas have a very strong presence, a very active cell,” Mayor Sánchez said.

There are other possible motives. A decade ago, Tello served as a leader of Mexico City’s public security agency, where he was accused of torturing and killing six detained youths. He was cleared of the charges.

According to reports in the local media, there are a number of clues, including footprints and fingerprints on the pickup truck in which the three bodies were found in the jungle, and video camera images from the streets around downtown Cancun where the men were abducted.

• An LA Times photo essay on the fall-out of the capture of “El Pozolero,” who allegedly disappeared hundreds of corpses of rival drug traffickers in Tijuana. Full story here.

• A new take on the Michael Phelps marijuana revelation, from a Boston Globe op-ed: “The legalization of pot would also afford Phelps the chance to become a pioneer in the field of celebrity-endorsed paraphernalia. After all, who wouldn’t want to buy a water pipe officially endorsed by Aquaman?”